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Ed Miliband ran for the Labour leadership because he believed he could offer an alternative; an alternative not just to the coalition government but, more crucially at that time, an alternative vision for Britain to that which his brother David was offering. Two and a half years on, with David Miliband departing British politics to go and head up the charity International Rescue Committee, it’s worth considering whether Ed’s alternative is really proving to be radically different.

On the face of it, it seems a slightly stupid question; since the starting gun to the leadership election in 2010, the media have delighted in contrasting ‘Red Ed’ with his more centrist brother David, desperately seeking to extend the dividing lines of the Blair-Brown era. If we are to believe the political commentariat, Ed and David are the proverbial chalk and cheese of the modern Labour party. Their visions for Britain are supposedly almost irreconcilably different. Read the rest of this entry →

Ed Miliband this morning made a bold intervention over funding for political parties, claiming that donations should be capped at £5,000 – a figure that is one tenth of the cap of £50,000 that David Cameron has previously put forward. The really headline-grabbing move though, is that Miliband signalled that trade unions will also be subjected to this cap, a move that he claims could deprive the Labour party of millions of pounds. Read the rest of this entry →

Recently a debate has been sparked about the nature of marriage in Britain, and whether or not homosexuals should be allowed to marry. The obvious answer is a resounding Yes, but as I’m paid to write articles (OK, I’m not) I shall expand upon the issue. Read the rest of this entry →

Ed Miliband has not had a good start to the year. He returned to the dispatch box for PMQs last Wednesday looking to put the previous year behind him. His supporters may well point to his successes, such as fathering the Oxford Dictionary Word Of The Year, but 2011 was definitely not the year of the Ed (Miliband, that is). Some say that PMQs is unimportant, and in many ways it is. When it comes to party morale though, it can play a significant role. Miliband will have stepped up to the dispatch box with memories of the last time he was there; when David Cameron played conductor to government benches prompting them into a raucous outburst as he put Miliband in his place and summed up the year for the Labour leader. Click here to keep reading

‘If you can’t decide, you can’t lead’. That was the scathing assessment David Cameron handed out to Ed Miliband in the Commons on Monday over Ed’s apparent reluctance to inform the country what he would have done if he had been in Cameron’s seat in Brussels last Thursday. Unfortunately, on this rare occasion, I would have to agree with our Prime Minister. Read the rest of this entry →